NCP way ahead of rivals in Dhule Municipal Corporation electionsSamajawadi Party opens account with 03 seats, Sixteen Muslims among the winners

Monday December 16, 2013 8:51 PM, ummid.com Staff Reporter

Dhule: The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) emerged as the single largest party in Dhule Municpal Corporation by winning 34 seats in the election held on Sunday, ahead of the crucial state election scheduled for the next year.

Counting of votes were done amid tight security Monday and all the results were available by afternoon..

The NCP has improved its tally from last time's 22 to 34 this election - just 02 seats short of the halfway mark to have a simple majority in the 70-member house.

Shiv-Sena is next to the NCP by winning 11 seats. Its alliance partner BJP is wahy behind with just 03 seats.

The Congress party has won 07 seats - 04 seats more than its earlier tally of 03.

The Loksangram Party of local MLA Anil Gote could win just 01 seat. It had won 07 seats in the last election.

The Independents have won on 10 seats whereas the Bahujan Samaj Party has won on 01 seat.

The Samajwadi Party, which fought the election first time from Dhule has won 03 seats.

A total of 16 Muslims belonging to the NCP, Congress, Samajwadi Party and independents have also won the election.

About sixty-one percent of the total voters exercised their democratic rights on Sunday to elect new body of the 70-member Dhule Municipal Corporation – the important district headquarter of North Maharashtra.

"An estimated 61% people cast their votes Sunday to elect the new civic body. Barring few minor incidents of clashes between rivals, the entire election process was peaceful", Dhule Municipal Commissioner Daulat Khan Pathan said while talking to ummid.com.

He also said that there is an increase of 04-05% as compared to last civic election.

"Compare to the polling percentage of last time when a total of 57% voters had cast their votes, we see an increase of about 04% this year", he said.

Elections in Dhule were held for 35 wards to elect a total of 70 councillors – two each from a ward. There were 348 polling booths, 15 of them were declared sensitive.

A total of 466 candidates contested the election. Of them 67 were from Congress, 63 were from Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and 54 were from Anil Gote led-Lok Sangram Party.

The Shiv-Sena and BJP had formed an alliance and contested on 60 seats. Rest 163 contested the election as independent.

Congress had fielded 24 Muslims – a maximum if compared with NCP's 15 and Lok Sangram Party's 11 Muslims. 64 Muslims had also contested the election as independent.

Shiv-Sena and BJP combine had not fielded any Muslim in the election.

In the last election too the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) had emerged as the single largest party but fell short of the simple majority and had to seek support from the independents to have its mayor in the house.

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